


best kept secrets

by battleshidge (Amiria_Raven)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Pidge is in denial, ft. Trash Lance, mentions of protective brother matt, plance, that fic where they keep taking each other's stuff, they're both embarrassed for a while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 19:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12613844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amiria_Raven/pseuds/battleshidge
Summary: In which Pidge's best kept secret turns out to be the salvaged Trash Lance she made when she was alone in space, and Lance's turns out to be a folder in his photo gallery.





	best kept secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_silverdoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_silverdoe/gifts).



> A Plance commission for the fabulous Justine (ily)!
> 
> We talked about a prompt, hashed out the details, decided it would be 1K...and then I started writing. If you know about me and writing, I guess you probably know that keeping it to 1K probably wasn't gonna be a thing from the start! 
> 
> Anyway, hope you guys like it! (You especially, Justine!)

Pidge was always very particular about her space, and especially picky about who was allowed in it. She always had been, and the only people allowed in her domain the majority of the time had been Shiro, Hunk, and then her brother, Matt, because she could reasonably trust them not to break anything. Occasionally Keith, because he had genuine curiosity about her stealth cloaking or something, and only rarely Lance because he liked to touch  _ everything _ . 

Lance and Keith would never,  _ ever _ set foot in her space at the same time, though. That was just asking for trouble, and Rover II in more pieces than she could count, and probably the untimely deaths of two unsuspecting paladins, heroes of the universe.

After her time alone, drifting in that trash heap in space, Pidge had yet another reason to keep Lance out of her room, though.

Sitting in the corner, innocently, was one single trash doll. She’d only had the room and the time to sneak one of them aboard the Castle of Lions, and she’d picked his. Since she’d made it originally, she’d upgraded it a little, so it now wore a single left sock and a soft blue shirt of Altean material. The rest of Trash Lance was the same as it had been, but it was still too risky to let Lance near her room if she hadn’t stowed it away in the closet for safekeeping. 

He’d never let her live it down, she was sure.

Despite Pidge’s very strict rules about anyone coming to her room, she found herself shoving Trash Lance into the closet more often than usual when her security sensors started alerting her of someone’s approach. Especially when that someone was Lance himself.

Lance wasn’t much different, though. He had a very strict skincare regimen, and interrupting it could cost an eardrum when he went off, and Pidge had the tendency of avoiding his room anyway. Sometimes he offered to help her with her own skincare routine and was offended anew every single time she told him she didn’t have one, nor did she  _ want _ one. And he tended to tell her to scram if she didn’t want a makeover because he needed his beauty rest, so they never really visited each other’s rooms.

After a while, that started to change. Pidge kept mysteriously losing her headphones and always,  _ always _ found them in Lance’s room. Lance kept panicking about breaking some Altean gadget and traipsing to Pidge’s room so she could help him fix it. Pidge ended up in Lance’s room, playing video games because they’d hooked it up in there instead of somewhere else, and he kept coming to her room to bug her to play.

No one else wanted to play against them; she and Lance  _ were _ the reigning champions, after all.

Pidge groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. The glasses she wore shifted up a little, and she readjusted them as she turned back to the screen in front of her. She was running a scan to see if there were any Galra ships in the area like Coran had asked her and it was taking a little longer than she’d expected, so she’d let her mind wander.

Her wandering mind had been betraying her as of late.

It didn’t help that she’d somehow acquired that stupid Altean phone of his. She’d been resisting the urge to go through and see what embarrassing selfies he’d managed to take, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold out. She was hoping he’d come to find it and take it before she gave in, but her security bots had showed him still searching for it in all the common areas before she’d started this scan.

Pidge sighed and glanced at the screen. Fifty-four percent done, and approximately twelve more minutes in the scan.

She shook her head and reached for the phone.

She figured it was only fair, since she hadn’t been able to find her headphones for a week and the handheld game that the Olkari had designed for her had mysteriously disappeared, too. And she’d recently found her favorite three pens–for the rare occasions when she actually wrote things out by hand–in Lance’s room and her spare headphones, for the times when he jacked her primary ones, had been in the red lion’s cockpit when she had gone up to do some calibration adjustments on the stealth cloaking mechanism. And then she recalled that one time that her glasses had been haphazardly situated atop the game console.

It didn’t matter that Trash Lance now wore two mismatched socks and a jacket that Lance hadn’t particularly liked and hadn’t missed in addition to the soft nightshirt he’d finally given up the search for, or that his favorite jacket was still draped across her computer chair from the last time he’d come to pester her two days ago. She still felt like his little thefts were greater than hers.

“Time to get even!” she muttered aloud, then snorted at the sound of her own voice as a few quick taps got her past his security code and into the device. He really needed to update his password instead of using the same one he’d had on his iPhone back on Earth.

Pidge navigated to the gallery, but only after snorting at the duck face selfie in front of Blue that was his wallpaper. She hadn’t even realized Altean technology like this could have a wallpaper, since it was hardly more than a high-tech, rectangular piece of glass, but she wasn’t surprised. For a civilization over ten thousand years old, their technology was leaps and bounds ahead of Earth’s.

When she got to the gallery, she found that Lance was surprisingly organized. There were albums for each system they’d been to, and within the folders she found a mixture of selfies with pretty aliens and just very aesthetic scenery snapshots. She hadn’t really taken Lance for one that would take pictures of the dawn mist over a fluorescent orange lake surrounded by trees with violet leaves, but there was definitely a series of those. 

Her scan was at seventy-nine percent when she next glanced up, with eight minutes remaining, so she turned back to the phone. She’d gone through three folders, editing a few photos so that Lance had devil horns or a curly black mustache just for the hell of it, and now she was debating which of the twelve other folders to go through. She thought about the system where Coran had that brain bug, but the folder titled  _ here, there, and everywhere _ was calling out to her.

It was  _ them _ .

The entire album was photos of the humans and Alteans, the Defenders of the Universe, whether it was at their publicity events or just random days around the castle. There were more than a few of Allura, whether she was smiling with someone or scowling at the camera or Lance, and several of Shiro. And there were several selfies of Lance with all of the others, though especially of Lance and Hunk.

It was...surprisingly sweet. Pidge didn’t know what to do with that information. Lance wasn’t supposed to be that sentimental and adorable, and despite the fact that she’d already known he  _ was _ , she still felt a little blindsided.

She spotted a zipped file inside simply titled  _ HER _ . and rolled her eyes at the meme reference, hovering her thumb over it. She wondered whether or not she should pry that deep, but curiosity got the better of her. She was expecting to find even more shots of Allura. After all, it wasn’t exactly a secret that Lance liked pretty girls or that Allura was at the top of the list.

When her own supremely bored expression peered back at her, she did a double take and scrolled down. It was a cover, then, to make sure that no one saw how many pictures he took of Allura.

She was sixty-four photos down when she realized that it wasn’t switching to Allura.

The entire folder was full of candid shots of  _ Pidge _ . One at the breakfast table, leaning on her hand tiredly as she stirred her coffee, her tongue poking out at him when he snapped the photo. She remembered that morning. And then there was a burst of several from the time she’d fallen asleep, curled at the end of his bed, after playing games for ten hours on the slow flight from one member of the Voltron Alliance to another. His jacket, the one that was currently on Trash Lance, was draped over her.

Her cheeks felt warm, but she scrolled even more.

A snapshot of her grimacing against the sunlight, and even a video of Lance cajoling her to come into the water. They were on a beach, on one of the planets with conditions similar enough to earth that they could safely leave their helmets and armor at home and wade into the water without the fear of their skin melting away. The following photo was of her, drenched, after he and Keith had teamed up–a rarity!–to throw her into the water.

She had less than three seconds’ warning from the time she heard the  _ whoosh _ of the automatic door to her room.

“Pidge! Have you seen my…” Lance trailed off, as she fumbled and the phone fell into her lap. “...phone?”

Cheeks burning, she covered it with her hands. “Uhh, no?”

They stared at each other for a minute, and Lance’s eyes slowly and deliberately went to the phone that her small hands weren’t completely covering. Pidge averted her gaze towards the blue blinking light of one of her systems in the corner, keeping tabs on him from the corner of her eye.

Lance lunged and Pidge yelped, pushing with her feet to send her computer chair rolling backwards away from him.

“Pidge!” he nearly squeaked, sliding to a halt before he slammed into her desk, his hands flying up in the air so he didn’t hit her tech. “Pidge, give my phone back!”

“Give me my headphones first,” she quipped back. She took a brief moment to appreciate her composure despite the folder she’d been going through, but that composure crumbled as his gaze moved over her head. A quick calculation of her position was enough to send her mind into a whirlwind of panic and the mantra of denial.

_ He didn’t see it. He didn’t see it. He didn’t see it. _

“Pidge, is that my jacket?” he asked incredulously. She resisted the urge to throw his phone at him.

“M-maybe! You just left it here last time, take it and leave and bring me my headphones!” Pidge stood up quickly, strategically placing herself between Lance and Trash Lance and whipping his favorite jacket off the back of her chair. “Here! Now go get my headphones! Or better yet, I’ll come with you!”

“No, not  _ that _ jacket,” he took it and looked over her head with ease, arching a delicate brow in curiosity. “That one I put on you when you fell asleep and–nevermind. Wait, are those my  _ socks _ ? And–Pidge, is that my favorite blue lion nightshirt?! Wait. What  _ is _ that? Is that supposed to be  _ me _ ?”

“Nope! Nope, nothing to see!” she squeaked, putting her palms firmly on his chest and trying to push him back. “Let’s go play some video games–and you can give me back that Olkari gift, too, and I’ll forgive you for coming into my room just this once–”

“Oh my god, Pidge,” Lance stumbled only a step back before standing firm. “Is that one of those dolls you made when you were out there alone?! Coran told me about them one time, but I didn’t know you had any of them  _ with _ you! Where are the others?”

Pidge groaned, giving up and flopping into her computer chair, pointedly turning her attention to the scan. Ninety-four percent.

“Wait. You don’t  _ have _ the others anymore, do you?”

She heard the smug tone in his voice, and she hunched her shoulders.

“Lance, I’m busy. Can you come back some other time?” her tone was clipped, and she tried to look busy, but she couldn’t do anything with her Galra scan running in the background so she reached to grab her tablet. Lance’s hand came down on top of the tablet before she could pick it up, and she groaned internally.

“Nah,” he said simply, and with a glance up at him she could see that he’d gone from panicked over his phone to confused about Trash Lance to completely and irreversibly smug. “So...wanna tell me why you’ve been stealing my clothes?”

“That makes it sound worse than it is!” she protested before she could catch herself.

“Ha!” Lance declared, victoriously. “So you  _ have _ been stealing my stuff!”

“What about my headphones?” she demanded, her arms crossed as she turned to look up at him. “And my pens? And my Olkari game cube?”

“My questions first!” he retorted, smirking. “And while we’re at it, what about my phone? And that on your desk,” he pointed, “isn’t it one of the sea shells I picked up while we were at a beach one time?”

It was, but she didn’t want to tell him that. Her silence seemed to be enough of an answer, though.

“Thought so.” He was still grinning, and he leaned closer. “So, Pidgey-pie, when were you gonna tell me about that sculpture in the corner?”

“It’s more of a trash heap,” she lifted her chin and looked away.

“Okay, sure, but you still brought the one of  _ me _ . So…?”

“I’ll tell you about Trash Lance when you tell me about  _ HER _ .!” Pidge lifted his phone up and wiggled it, trying to ignore the flush in her cheeks. Lance’s smug grin turned to one of shock in a moment, and then slid into embarrassment.

“You  _ were _ looking through my stuff!” he squeaked, reaching for his phone. She pulled it out of his reach and he leaned awkwardly over her to try and get it. He had the arm length on her, but she put her bare foot up and on his stomach just as his fingers grazed it and pushed back. Instead of pushing him back, her chair started to tip, and she started flailing.

Lance abandoned the phone for the moment, even as she tossed her arm forward to try to keep her balance and nearly smacked him in the face with it, and helped right her chair. Once it was stable again, Pidge instead clutched it to her chest.

“Tell me!” she demanded, furious at herself and the heat in her cheeks.

“Didn’t you see?” he asked instead, almost defeated. He lowered his eyes and glanced away, tanned cheeks flushed.

“Yeah but...why is it pictures of  _ me _ ?” she asked, uncertainly. “Shouldn’t you try to hide your pictures of Allura, or something? Or maybe you’d rather people see those, so you hide–”

“Don’t even go there!” he cut across. “I didn’t  _ want _ to hide them, but didn’t you see how  _ many _ there were? Holy crow, Pidge, do you think I’d ever live it down if your brother saw it? Or Hunk, even though he already  _ knows _ ?! I had to put them all in a folder after Matt nearly nabbed my phone last time he was here! At least I caught him when he got too distracted by all the pictures of Allura to scroll too far. I like  _ breathing _ , thank you!”

The entire time he was talking, Pidge felt her cheeks burning even more, but there was a shy smile slowly spreading across her face.

His face was just as red as hers felt.

“Okay, enough about  _ that _ ,” he shook his head. “What about  _ Trash Lance _ ? And the fact that he’s wearing my  _ clothes _ ?”

“You leave things in the laundry room a lot.” Pidge shrugged, averting her eyes. But she couldn’t hide that shy smile.

“It’s still stealing them,” he retorted. “And don’t dodge the question!”

“I could only bring one of them with me! I didn’t have enough room and we didn’t have much time, either, so I grabbed one and went.”

“And that one just happened to be me?” his smirk was back. She could hear it in his voice. But it was tinged with embarrassment, and she was satisfied knowing that she, at least, was not alone in being properly mortified at whatever this situation was.

“Didn’t you see?” she imitated his earlier question, shrugging a little and sinking lower in her chair. 

“Well, yeah,” he shifted a little, stepping back to sit on the edge of her bed a few feet away. “But it would be...nice...to hear you say…”

He trailed off, but Pidge interpreted the  _ ‘that you picked me’ _ that he left unsaid. And it made her stomach flutter more than she had thought possible, the way he could be all defensive, then smug, and then vulnerable, all in the span of a single conversation. Pidge was also tired of waiting, and tired of tiptoeing around when she knew exactly what she had meant by bringing Trash Lance...even if she hadn’t known  _ then _ .

With a deep breath, she turned to face him, even as her scan gave a chime behind her to alert that it was done. There were no additional alarms, so she knew it hadn’t detected anything, and in this moment, Lance was more important.

“I picked you, Lance.”

His head lifted, eyes wide, and then a soft smile spread.

“...Yeah. Me, too.”

Her heart leapt a little, and she couldn’t help but start laughing. After a moment, Lance joined in, flopping backwards on her bed. After a few minutes, she stood and stepped over, dropping his phone on his stomach.

“ _ Oof _ .”

“You’re welcome,” she sniffed, hands on her hips.

“Thanks,” he responded, a fond grin slipping across his face as he sat up, reaching a hand out to her.

“I still want my headphones back, though.”

“Aw,  _ man _ ,” Lance groaned, but he had pulled her hand from her hip and was sliding his fingers into hers. “Can’t I borrow them for a while?”

“I’ve been looking for them for  _ weeks _ ,” she snorted, sitting down on the bed beside him. “Besides, taking photos of someone without their permission is illegal, so if you don’t give them back, I’ll press charges.”

“Do Earth laws even count out here?” he asked, tentatively resting his chin on her head. It was...different, but Pidge decided it was nice.

“I don’t know,” she answered, but she squeezed his hand and he laughed, his breath ruffling her hair.

In the corner, her best kept secret stood sentinel as they leaned back against the wall and she coaxed him into letting her finish scrolling through his best kept secret. He only allowed it after she swore she wouldn’t delete any of the candid shots.

When he fell asleep, leaning his head on top of hers, she took the liberty of taking a selfie of them and slipping it into a folder she created called  _ US _ .

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, catch me on my main tumblr at [panda013](http://panda013.tumblr.com) or on my VLD sideblog at [battleshidge](http://battleshidge.tumblr.com)!


End file.
